Indian Ocean

So I spent last week on two of Australia's external territories - Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. They're about halfway between Australia and Sri Lanka and have a combined population of less than three thousand people - about 600 on Cocos and the rest on Christmas. It was work, so didn't get any touristing in, but we were there to look at outside things, so I couldn't help but take some very pretty photos.

Cocos is about 27 islands on a coral atoll on top of a volcano with nothing for a very long way in any direction. It's ten feet tall at the highest point and covered in coconut palms. The ocean side has maybe 50 metres of reef before the drop off - we saw turtles and reef sharks. I took some terrible photos of them from the shore, that really did not turn out.

Christmas Island is completely different - tall and vertical and covered in jungle. Most of it is a national park and it's known for the amazing migrating crabs. They are forest dwelling crabs that migrate over a couple of months to the sea and then back. We weren't there for the migration but there are still millions of them everywhere (very cute, but I wouldn't mess with them).

It was wonderful to go somewhere I've never been and see some things I've never seen! And never would off my own bat, to be honest. It has a small tourist industry but it's a four hour flight from Perth, which is at least four hours from Canberra, and it's remote Australia so everything is expensive. But stunning.